Timetable for Moon colony announced

NASA plans to permanently occupy an outpost at one of the Moon's poles, officials announced on Monday.

The first four astronauts will land for a short visit in 2020, but it will take until at least 2024 to prepare for "a fully functional presence with rotating crews", said Scott Horowitz, associate administrator for the exploration systems mission directorate.

It has taken NASA nearly three years to get to this point in their planning, following President George W Bush's announcement of his "vision" for exploring the Moon and Mars).

In April 2006, representatives of NASA and 13 other space agencies met to plan themes and objectives for an exploration strategy – essentially why to return to the Moon and what to do there. (NASA videos relating to the six themes decided upon are available.)

The planned base on the Moon is now a key part of the strategy. But NASA will not be going it alone. "It is critical we have international participation and commercial participation," says NASA deputy administrator Shana Dale, although no agreements are yet in place.

"The US will build the transportation infrastructure," said Dale. NASA will also provide initial capabilities for communications, navigation, and operation around the base. But the US is seeking help from other countries and private corporations in other areas, including the lunar habitation modules, power, logistics and robotics.

Daily extremes
The first full-scale test of the new US Ares 1 rocket is set for 2009 using a dummy second stage. An active second stage will be tested until 2012, and the launcher will not fly with a human crew until 2014, four years after NASA plans to ground the shuttle fleet.

Money for the ambitious plans will come from phasing out the shuttle. NASA does not expect a boost above its current 0.6% of the US budget, Horowitz said.

The first lunar explorers will be robots. Set for launch in October 2008, the Lunar Robotic Orbiter will target the poles to help select where to place the lunar outpost. Some spots near the poles appear to be sunlit 70% to 80% of the time, promising power for solar cells and more moderate temperatures than in areas cycling between the extremes of night and day.

Robotic lander
Mountains keep the floors of some polar craters in perpetual shade, so volatile compounds such as water should have accumulated for billions of years. However, hopes for finding large quantities of ice at the south pole have dimmed recently (see Hopes for lunar ice melt away).



But the Moon's polar regions are hard to study from Earth, so Horowitz says an orbiter will provide vital new information. A robotic lander would then visit the selected site after 2010.

The lander that delivers astronauts to the lunar surface will be crucial, Horowitz noted. In order to deliver the materials to the surface for constructing the base, the mass landed will need to be maximised and the mass of the ascent module minimised.

Another "basic high-level requirement" for the lander is to be able to go everywhere on the Moon, says Horowitz.

How fast the base expands and how many people work there will depend on how many other organisations become involved, but he says "it's obviously too early" to say what visitors would pay for a night's stay at the outpost.

Jeff Hecht
Source

Virtual World Goes On Sale Tuesday

By Laurie Sullivan

Want to own California or New York? In Weblo's virtual world anyone can.

From the imagination of Weblo CEO Rocky Mirza, and financed in part by former MySpace.com Chairman Richard Rosenblatt, Weblo will offer people a virtual world for the taking. The site launches Tuesday.

"Anything that exists in the real-world, you can buy it in our online world," Mirza said, who explained the idea came to him nine years ago while a passenger in a friend's pick-up truck driving from Ottawa to Toronto, Canada, on highway 401.

The online world of Weblo creates a virtual carbon copy of the real life, down to individual streets in cities around the world. It's a place where people can become real estate moguls, politicians, or celebrities. Mirza said the site launched briefly in 2001 to test property management and sale, but later closed.

This time, when the site launches next week, the site will offer ways for people to make money through commerce transactions, pay-per-click advertising methods, and online commissions. People will purchase property in real U.S. dollars, paying taxes to the mayor of the town, the governor of the state, and the United Nation of Weblo.

"It sparks creativity and provides a way for people to publish, and it entices people to make money from the real estate they develop online," said Rosenblatt, who now runs Demand Media, which focuses on domains and niche content Web sites. "It's intimidating for people to think about setting up a blog, but not intimidating for them to purchase something online they have seen and understand in the real world."

For those who wish to become real-estate tycoons, houses will cost approximately $2 each. All monetary transactions are done in U.S. dollars. Every piece of land, from the United States to Asia, in the real world will go up for sale at launch. California, the most expensive, will sell for $50,000.

City and country population in a real city, such as Los Angeles, as well as the number of citizens in Weblo communities, are factors taken into consideration when pricing real estate online.

As more members join, prices for real estate, as well as the Weblo economy, will change. It's all based on calculations written into the open source software running the site. MySQL servers support the content.

"You can make residual income if you own New York City in Weblo, for example," Mirza said. "You can make money from taxes because the more residents who join from the real-world New York City, the more you make."

"Some societies are ready for it because it offers a viable alternative to conventional networking, but some are clearly not," said Michael Osterman, founder of Osterman Research. "Look at the opportunities. Having a site like this would allow an ordinary person to loan money to a small business in Duluth, Minnesota."

Countries like England, Israel, Iran, and the United States will have political representation. In the U.S., for example, citizens will elect the president to run the country, but people can buy into local and state government positions.

A young woman who would only identify herself as Lola Rodrigues from Israel has her sites set on buying the state of California. "If I buy California, I become the governor," she said. "Think about the strategy of the game. Each time someone builds property in California they pay taxes and I make a profit."

Rodrigues, calling California the hot property, said it's no different than making an investment in mutual funds or the stock market. The transactions are transparent. It's not like buying physical property, such as a house, but rather "a different way to turn money," she said.

AMD AM2 vs Intel Core 2 Duo

by Jason Saundalkar

AMD and Intel have been engaged in a processor rivalry for well over 10 years and now both companies have their next-generation dual-core CPUs (central processing units) primed and ready to go.

For AMD, its new processors could be considered an evolutionary step forward rather than a brand new product altogether, as the new Athlon 64 processors share the same sort of technology found on the older models.

The key difference is that the new Athlon 64 chips feature built-in DDR2 memory controllers, which means they can now be used with DDR2 modules running at frequencies of 533MHz, 667MHz and 800MHz. This of course means you cannot use these new CPUs with your existing Athlon 64 motherboard as those are equipped with only regular DDR RAM sockets.

Another reason you can’t use these new AMD CPUs with your existing motherboard is that they feature 940pins rather than 939. The new 940-pin CPUs won’t work with the much older 940-pin Opteron and Athlon 64 FX motherboards either. In other words, the new 940-pin CPUs, also known as AM2, are only compatible with new AM2-ready motherboards. With us so far?

The CPU on test here is a 5000+ Athlon 64 X2 processor that has both of its cores running at 2.6GHz. 1Mbyte of L2 cache is onboard; the CPU runs on a front side bus of 200MHz and is fabricated using a 90nm manufacturing process. This chip is expected to retail for approximately $696.

Over on the Intel side of the fence, Core 2 Duo is a completely new architecture. With these new desktop chips (codenamed Conroe), based on the ‘Core’ architecture, Intel has abandoned the old, high-frequency-producing NetBurst architecture in favour of something more efficient.

In addition, Intel has finally dropped its ‘Pentium’ brand. Instead, all chips based on the new architecture will feature ‘Core’ branding.

Conroe, like its older counterpart the Pentium 4, makes use of the LGA775 socket. While this means the processor will physically fit into any existing motherboard, a lot of the existing LGA775 boards aren’t compatible with Core 2 Duo CPUs. Some vendors are offering BIOS updates however for certain 975X boards, so it’s a good idea to check if a vendor offers such an update for your 975X motherboard before rushing out to buy a new one.

Our test sample Core 2 Duo CPU will retail for roughly $530 and is known as the Core 2 E6700. It features two cores ticking along at 2.66GHz. The chip is produced using a 65nm manufacturing process and is packed with 4Mbytes of L2 cache. It runs on a 266MHz quad pumped bus, which effectively means it’s running at a speed of 1066MHz (266MHz x 4). This processor lacks hyperthreading technology but features 64-bit software support and SpeedStep technology. The latter reduces the core speed when load on the CPU is light, thereby reducing power consumption and thus heat.

How we tested

We used a mix of benchmarks to test the capabilities of these two processors. Standard application results came courtesy of PCMark 2005, which reports CPU, memory and hard drive performance results as separate figures. Higher
numbers here signified a quicker, more effective CPU.

Moving to multimedia, we put together three separate tests to put each CPU under some major strain. Our MPEG to DivX conversion test involves converting a 24-second, 1920 x 1080 pixel MPEG2 file, measuring 53Mbytes, into a DivX video using DivX Coverter 6.1’s high-definition convert profile. We timed how long each processor took to finish this process and, as with all our timed tests, lower times represent better performance.

The next multimedia test involved creating a DVD 4:3 NTSC compatible MPEG2 video from a 416Mbyte digital video (DV) file. The file contains two minutes and one second of footage at a resolution of 720 x 480 pixels.

We used TMPGEnc 2.524 at its default settings and timed how long it took for each processor to finish this exam.
To round off the multimedia tests, we used Lame Encoder
3.98 to convert a 718Mbyte WAV (audio) file into an MP3 using a 128kbits/s bit rate.

Each component’s gaming performance meanwhile was determined by running F.E.A.R, Serious Sam, 3DMark 2003 and 2005 at 1024 x 768 pixels. At this resolution, the speed of the CPU is more important than the GPU, so higher numbers are directly indicative of a faster processor.

Performance points

From an application software perspective, there’s no denying that Core 2 Duo is stupendously fast. The 2.66GHz E6700’s PCMark CPU and memory scores comprehensively trounced the Athlon 64 X2 5000+. If you use your machine to tackle Microsoft Word, PowerPoint or any other applications, Conroe then is the way to go right now. Interesting, as traditionally Athlon 64 CPUs always finished with better PC Mark results than Pentium 4s.

Multimedia-wise, Intel’s Pentium 4 has always given AMD a sound thrashing when it’s come to dealing with video and sound editing, encoding and even decoding. This hasn’t changed with Core 2 Duo, in fact the new CPU is even better. We were particularly impressed with the Intel E6700’s MPEG to DivX and WAV to MP3 encode times. The former showed the Intel offering to be 26 seconds faster than the AMD 5000+, while the latter saw AMD trailing by 48.

If you’re building a PC to be used as a PVR (personal video recorder) or a full-on entertainment machine that has to frequently encode or decode sound and video, Conroe will offer the best performance.

Games were also typically an AMD specialty but this didn’t hold true here. Core 2 Duo walked away with superior numbers across the board. Building a hot rod gaming rig with multi-GPU technology? Conroe is the way to go.

Conclusion

This round cleanly goes to Intel as its new Conroe processor simply outguns AMD’s new offering at every turn. Compared to its older Pentium 4 brethren, which offered strong a media performance but lacked application and game punch, Conroe is super fast at everything.

It also produces much less heat than its predecessor so you won’t hear your heatsink’s fan scream when the CPU is running under 100% load when playing games or decoding a video for example.

AMD’s AM2 processor is far from slow, but compared to the new ‘Core’ architecture it looks like AMD will have to go back to drawing board because DDR2 doesn’t bring much to the Athlon’s performance plate. To sum up, if we had to put together a performance machine now, we’d buy Conroe, no questions asked.

Source

Microsoft turns photo collections into a 3D virtual reality

New technology demoed this week by Microsoft could enable companies promoting tourist attractions or resorts to simply take a whole series of random photos of the facility and use these to create a virtual tour that could be accessed over the Internet.
At the SISGGRAPH 2006 conference in Boston, researchers from Microsoft and the University of Washington demonstrated a new photo-browsing system claimed t "enable people to combine their photos with thousands of others collected on the Internet to present a detailed 3-D model which gives viewers the sensation of smoothly gliding around the scene from every angle."

"As people navigate around the model with their mouse and click on specific photos, the system smoothly transitions between images to create an evocative sense of movement," Microsoft claims.

The prototype technology, called Photosynth, can be previewed at http://labs.live.com/photosynth and, according to Microsoft will be available for download later this year.

Researchers at the University and at Microsoft Live Labs "combined both new and established techniques in computer vision; image-based modelling and rendering; image browsing, retrieval and annotation; and key-point detection and matching to present unstructured collections of photos in a 3-D perspective." As people navigate around the model with their mouse and click on specific photos, the system smoothly transitions between images to create an evocative sense of movement," according to Microsoft.

According to the Photosynth website, the process begins with "nothing more than a bunch of digital photos," that "might be a mixture of images from many different cameras, shooting conditions, dates, times of day, resolutions, and so on."

Each photo is processed by computer vision algorithms to extract hundreds of distinctive features, like the corner of a window frame or a doorhandle. Then, photos that share features are linked together in a web. When a feature's found in multiple images, its 3D position can be calculated. When there are many cameras, and many features in common, the algorithms behind Photosynth, it is claimed, "can figure out not only where the features are in 3D, but where all of the cameras would have to have been, and which way they were aimed, consistent with the features they 'saw'.

A key component of the system is smooth digital rendering and zoom capabilities developed by Seadragon and acquired by Microsoft in February 2006.

According to Microsoft this features "The fastest, smoothest image zooming ...[and] can browse collections of many thousands of full resolution images just as smoothly as a single image."

Demos, screen shots, the research paper and other information on Photo Tourism can be found on the University of Washington and Microsoft Research Web sites

Hackers smoke out Firefox

By Darren Pauli, Computerworld Today

Hackers have found to exploit a hole in the open-source Firefox browser that enables them to monitor people's activity on the Internet.

The Infostealer.Snifula uses works as an extension to Firefox but installs malicious Trojans that are loaded at start-up. The Trojan captures contents of form submission events including passwords and forwards them to its main process where it is sent to the remote attacker.

Symantec security engineer, Candid Wuest said the exploits, which commonly focus on Internet Explorer, began on Mozilla browsers in March this year with Javascript-based JS.Ffsniff. "When an infected user submits a Web form, [JS.Ffsniff] will parse the site and steal all information that is submitted by the Web form, including passwords," Wuest said. "The JS.Ffsniff script then sends this information to a predefined e-mail address using XPCOM objects."

Joji Hamada, Symantec senior security manager, said the exploit has had a limited impact locally and recommended downloads from trusted sites only. "Our intelligence indicates the threat has been noticed in Australia. However, the impact of the attack overall is minimal at this stage," Hamada said. "To protect themselves from this type of threats, users should ensure they only download software from reputable, trusted sites."

Wuest predicts the attacks will increase with the browser's popularity and recommended users install current browser patches. "With the steady increase of the number of Firefox users we will see the number of malicious extensions created for Firefox grow," he said. "Unfortunately, as soon as something becomes popular, it also becomes a popular target."

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Radio Frequency Identification: Privacy's Last Gasp

I'm sure most of us have heard of the fascinating new industry that's sprung up like a weed as an offshoot of our advances in technology: Data mining. In a nutshell, it involves the collection and dissemination of information about individuals for any use that anybody can think of.

From governments conducting censuses to businesses trying to develop profiles of the people most likely to buy their product, raw information about you concerning everything from your preference in toilet paper to how many sheets you use when you wipe is all grist for their mills. If you use three sheets now, Procter and Gamble wants to know if you'd be more willing to buy a product if you could do the same job with only two sheets, or would you be willing to use four if it were softer?

While most of us don't even think like that, it's these types of questions that plague the minds of the product development folk at big corporations and their marketing departments. Anything and everything they can find out about you will help them build a better picture of how they can get you to buy their products.

Information has become the hottest commodity on the market these days and it's not just being put to so-called innocent use by the corporations and advertising firms. Everybody, from private insurance companies to mortgage brokers to credit agencies, has ways they can make use of that data.

Do you order a large amount of pizza on your credit card or buy a lot of groceries with a high fat content? Don't be surprised if, the next time your health insurance premiums come up for renewal, they either increase your premium or you are turned down because you represent too great a risk because of possible cardiac problems.

You may think I'm exaggerating, and I wish I were, but according to this article in the Globe and Mail newspaper, it's already happening in the United States. A chain of grocery stores in New England has developed software that generates a dietary profile of each of its shoppers based on their grocery purchases.

In order to help cover the costs of developing the programme, they have sold these profiles to organizations wanting to know which of their clients has brought their ill health on themselves through bad diet so they can cut them off from coverage.

The villain behind all this is something that's actually been around for quite a while but is only just being utilized to maximum effect. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is small, silent, and can be utilized everywhere. Procter and Gamble want to install a chip in your fridge so they can monitor what foods you buy.

NCR is installing small screens in shopping carts in grocery stores that will run ads complementing the product you just tossed in the cart. BellSouth has applied for the patent to rummage through your garbage so they can see which chips you threw out and then sell that list to marketing firms. Finally, Pfizer is keeping track of how many Viagra you take and when through chips in the packaging.

Of course the larger implications for RFID use lie in security issues. IBM currently holds the patent for building RFID peephole in walls and ceilings of public places where they will be able to peek into your purse, pocket, and wallet. The chip is being installed in ID cards, like the new American national ID card currently on order, and passports tagged at the borders.

The fact that data is being collected in ways we can't even imagine is scary enough as it is, but what's even scarier are the implications of what that data could be utilized for. Like the example of the New England grocery chain selling its client information to insurance companies, what's to stop any and all information changing hands from supposedly innocent users like marketing companies to those who will use it to create some sort of profile of you for insurance reasons or establishing credit?

Finally, it comes down to what gives them the right to gather this information in the first place. This is information akin to that gathered by a wiretap as far as I'm concerned and should be subject to the same rules and regulations. What gives any business the right to know about my eating habits, just on the off chance that they might be able to sell me a product?

If a government wants to spy on a person, fine — ask the courts for permission like you would in the case of a wire tap and you can then plant RFID devices all over their body. If you're going to have RFID devices in public places monitoring people's activity, which is understandable in these strange times, make damn sure you draw up really tight regulations governing how the information it produces is used and who has access to it.

There is also the question of disposal of the information gathered. What will happen to the literally miles and miles of data that is accumulated? Is it going to be stored somewhere or will it be deleted as soon as it's found to be of no use to anyone?

Radio frequencies can be monitored by anybody. This technology is highly susceptible to being hacked, according to engineers at John Hopkins University, with it becoming even more vulnerable when they enable the tags to be read from a distance. What kind of guarantees are there that personal information like medical records aren't being lifted and then sold to the highest bidder? Maybe it's naïve to believe that sort of activity doesn't occur already, but this will make it even easier for people to access that information in the future.

A few years back when Benetton found out that consumers don't like being spied on, they were forced to recall millions of garments that had RFID chips installed in them. Other companies in Europe have been forced to back down in the face of consumer outrage, so you can make a difference. In the above cases, people simply refused to buy products from Gillette and other companies involved with making use of the chip until they said they had removed them.

But it seems like North Americans, in spite of all our claims to be freedom loving, have no problems giving up their freedom of privacy at the drop of the hat. The governments have plenty of means of collecting information about all of us already, all of which are regulated by laws to protect you from them. RFID is no different from things like wiretaps, telephoto lenses, and long-range microphones employed to infringe on your privacy now.

I see little or no justification for corporations like Proctor and Gamble to be accumulating personal information on individuals in the name of making sure we see the right commercial at the right time. As these new information technologies get more and more sophisticated, it's up to the public to decide whether or not they are willing to allow their personal habits to be public knowledge.

The industry claims that regulations will develop as the technology use expands. To me, that is akin to closing the barn door after the animals have escaped. Now's the time to tell them what we will and will not allow them to collect and what we will allow them to do with that information. You have the right to privacy. Demand that it is respected.

Google Adds Traffic Info to Mobile Maps App

Google has enhanced its Google Maps mobile application by adding traffic information and the ability to save routes, the Mountain View, Calif., company plans to announce Tuesday.

Google Maps, which can be downloaded for free to mobile devices, will update itself automatically for existing users, said Gummi Hafsteinsson, a Google product manager.

When users enter a route, Google Maps will now indicate traffic flow along the way by tracing segments in green, yellow or red. A green segment has normal traffic flow, yellow indicates some congestion and red signals heavy traffic. Based on the traffic condition, the application also estimates driving time.

The traffic data is constantly updated and comes from a variety of sources. It is available for about 30 major U.S. cities, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, Hafsteinsson said.

The PC version of Google Maps, doesn’t offer the traffic-flow feature yet, although it will be added later on, he said.

Also new is a feature that lets users save routes they take on a regular basis, like their commute to work, allowing them to call them up more easily, Hafsteinsson said. Unlike the traffic information, which is United States-only, this feature is also available in Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Although Google gives the application away, mobile carriers may apply charges related to its use and data transfers.

A list of mobile devices that support Google Maps can be found online.

Source

War of the Internet world

By Brier Dudley
Seattle Times staff columnist

Many people have heard about the huge data centers that Microsoft and Yahoo! are building east of the mountains.

In the War on Google, those are the aircraft carriers. Less well known are the special-forces teams the erstwhile tech darlings have assembled for nimble, strategic attacks on their rival.

These teams are led by newcomers whom Microsoft and Yahoo! brought in to invigorate their organizations, lure hot talent and reclaim the buzz. Overall their mission is to accelerate the creation of Internet products that get their companies back in the running.

I spent time last week with both of these commanders: Gary Flake, director of Microsoft's Live Labs Internet research and product group, and Bradley Horowitz, Yahoo! vice president of product strategy.

They have similar roles but radically different styles that reflect the personalities of their companies. Neither would say whether their companies are forming some sort of anti-Google alliance.

The strongest link is Flake, who led Yahoo! research until last summer. Earlier he was at Overture, an online ad pioneer that failed to stay ahead of Google.

Flake doesn't want that to happen again. Live Labs is trying new product-development approaches that mesh the work of engineers with scientists in Microsoft's research group. Its team of about 40 engages on projects around the company and incubates projects of its own.

"Our target is nothing less than to build the greatest Internet technology in the world," Flake said.

Live Labs also helps fill a role that has been played by Bill Gates, research boss Rick Rashid and strategists like Craig Mundie and Ray Ozzie. Flake said Microsoft's too big now for one or even a few individuals to keep track of it all.

"We have historically relied on some really brilliant people to ... look at the forest and occasionally dive down and look at the trees and how the trees related to one another," Flake said. "While Live Labs isn't quite the institutionalization of that function, it's more of an acknowledgment that that's a really important thing to do."




Horowitz was hired by Yahoo! two years ago to work on multimedia search, then he moved to the product-strategy job last year.

Yahoo! is less than half as old as Microsoft and has 10,000 employees to Microsoft's 70,000. But after Google took its Internet crown, Yahoo! realized it, too, had product-development challenges.

Horowitz finds and nurtures promising ideas. "We're the grease of innovation — we're a catalyst and a lubricant," he said.

One approach is "Hack Yahoo!," a program that has all employees spend a day building whatever they choose. They pitch their ideas on stage, and executives give tongue-in-cheek awards like "Least Likely to Ever Get Past HR" or "Most Likely to Keep the Lights On and Pay the Bills."

Hack Yahoo! is "a means of finding the cream within and allowing the good stuff to get the attention and the mindshare," Horowitz said.

Last week's earnings reports made it clear both companies have a ways to go. Yahoo! said its new ad platform is delayed, and Microsoft said its version won't be profitable until 2008. Meanwhile, the pressure's on Flake and Horowitz.

"We've got a pretty strong hand now," Horowitz said. "Now we've got to rearrange the cards and play that hand in a lot of ways, but the hand itself, I'm pretty proud of what we were able to do."

Brier Dudley's column appears Mondays. Reach him at 206-515-5687 or bdudley@seattletimes.com

HP Unveils Revolutionary Wireless Chip that Links the Digital and Physical Worlds

Hewlett-Packard has announced a Memory Spot chip "about the size of a grain of rice or smaller (2mm to 4mm square), with a built-in antenna. The chips could be embedded in a sheet of paper or stuck to any surface, and could eventually be available in a booklet as self-adhesive dots," says the company's press release.

It's like an RFID chip, but can hold 256 kilobits (32K) to 4 megabits (512K), so "it could store a very short video clip, several images or dozens of pages of text. Future versions could have larger capacities."

Information can be accessed by a read-write device that could be incorporated into a cell phone, PDA, camera, printer or other implement. To access information, the read-write device is positioned closely over the chip, which is then powered so that the stored data is transferred instantly to the display of the phone, camera or PDA or printed out by the printer. Users could also add information to the chip using the various devices.



HP suggests a number of uses:

-- Medical records: Embed a Memory Spot chip into a hospital patient's wrist band and full medical and drug records can be kept securely available.

-- Audio photo: Attach a chip to the prints of photographs and add music, commentary or ambient sound to enhance the enjoyment of viewing photos.

-- Digital postcards: Send a traditional holiday postcard to family and friends with a chip containing digital pictures of a vacation, plus sounds and even video clips.

-- Document notes: A Memory Spot chip attached to a paper document can include a history of all the corrections and additions made to the text, as well as voice notes and graphical images.

-- Perfect photocopies: A Memory Spot chip attached to a cover sheet eliminates the need to copy the original document. Just read the perfect digital version into the photocopier and the result will be sharp output every time, no matter how many copies are needed, and avoiding any possibility of the originals jamming in the feeder.

-- Security passes: Add a chip to an identity card or security pass for the best of both worlds -- a handy card with secure, relevant digital information included.

-- Anti-counterfeit tags: Counterfeit drugs are a significant problem globally. Memory Spot chips can contain secure information about the manufacture and quality of pharmaceuticals. When added to a drug container, this can prove their authenticity. A similar process could be used to verify high-value engineering and aviation components.

There are reports at BBC News, USA Today, The New York Times

Zune - iPod killer from Microsoft

By Kim Peterson

Seattle Times technology reporter

Microsoft confirmed Friday that it will sell a music and entertainment product later this year under the brand name "Zune," the first of a family of devices designed to compete head-to-head with the dominant Apple iPod.

The first player, scheduled to be on store shelves this holiday season, will have a hard drive and a wireless connection that lets users share music, Microsoft said in an interview with Billboard magazine. Later on, the company could release players for video and video games.

These details have been rumored for months as Microsoft held talks about the devices with the entertainment industry. Some analysts said Friday that Microsoft confirmed the news to ensure that the speculation doesn't drive expectations beyond what the products would actually deliver.

Microsoft released little information Friday, but people briefed on the project said Zune will work with a Microsoft service that allows users to listen to a vast library of songs for a monthly subscription fee. These services act more like a rental service for music, although users can pay more to purchase permanent copies of songs.

The model is used in RealNetworks' Rhapsody service. It isn't a direct competitor to Apple's market-leading iTunes Music Store, which is not subscription-based and sells songs and videos on a for-purchase basis.

A subscriber will be able to share an entire play list of favorite songs with another person, as long as both are paying the monthly fee. The Zune service will also go beyond previous services in terms of allowing artists to connect directly with users in new ways. An artist could offer weekly releases over Zune, for example. One week might be a tour of that person's home or a spoken message to fans.

"Where Apple, I think to a certain extent, focused on the user, Microsoft is taking a different approach and really focusing on the artist and trying to create a system that would best allow that artist to speak to their fans," said technology analyst Rob Enderle.

Microsoft released a geometric, Tinkertoylike logo for Zune on Friday and set up a Web site, at comingzune.com, to promote the devices.

One music-industry executive said Microsoft is planning a huge marketing and promotional launch for Zune. So far, however, the hype seemed to be centered on a whisper campaign that got its first stamp of legitimacy with Friday's announcement.

Analysts said Microsoft will have to pull out all the stops to launch Zune in a way that can make any significant dent in the 70 percent share that Apple owns in the digital music player market. Already, Microsoft took an unusual tactic in choosing Billboard as the vehicle for its first Zune announcement.

"This isn't the type of product that's going to be announced at some kind of industry conference by Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer talking about the technical specs," said Jupiter Media analyst Michael Gartenberg.

Microsoft is also parting with history in that it will begin competing directly with partners who have their own digital music players. Microsoft has worked closely with Creative Technology, Toshiba and iriver on devices, but they haven't made many inroads against the iPod.

To really compete with Apple, Microsoft felt it had to go its own way, even if that meant sacrificing some partner relationships, Gartenberg said.

"Microsoft has been preaching that the market really cares about choice in platform," he said. "But consumers are saying the only choice they care about was should they get an iPod Shuffle or iPod Nano. At the end of the day, the partners failed to deliver any meaningful market share."

But to really get in the ring with Apple, analysts suggested that Microsoft needs to have its own counterpoint to Steve Jobs, the enigmatic Apple chief executive who personally introduces new products at closely watched company events. Jobs regularly fires up the technology crowd in ways that Microsoft executives do not but may need to, for a Zune launch.

Don't expect Apple to step to the sidelines for Zune. Jobs predicted a Microsoft digital music, or MP3, player in a January interview with Newsweek.

"What's going to happen is that Microsoft is going to have to get into the hardware business of making MP3 players," he said. "This year."

And in a conference call with analysts Wednesday, Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said he was excited about the company's future products.

"We are very confident in the products in our pipeline and I just don't imagine that the creativity at Apple could ever be low," he said.

Kim Peterson: 206-464-2360 or kpeterson@seattletimes.com

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